


Landslide

by inber



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Anger, Angst, Come Shot, Cruelty, Dark, Drug Use, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23959912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inber/pseuds/inber
Summary: Left in the wake of Geralt’s ire on the mountain, Jaskier descends. Geralt follows after taking time to meditate, and begins to realise that he’s started something devastating that he may not be able to navigate.Obviously inspired by the events of Netflix’s Witcher, Episode Six, although from here it’ll go waaay out of canon. And the bold/italicised lyrics – I shouldn’t need to say – but they are from ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 64
Kudos: 391





	1. Part One - Jaskier

_**I took my love, I took it down;  
I climbed a mountain and I turned around** _

There was only one path down the mountain, and yet Jaskier had somehow managed to get lost.

He knew he was at least halfway down, but he’d taken a turn and had ended up at a cluster of boulders, behind which a sheer drop advertised a dead end. Night had draped silky fingers across the sun, easing her below the horizon with a guiding hand. In the shelter of the stone, Jaskier made camp. He thought about lighting a fire, but he wasn’t cold. He thought about what might be lurking in the darkness beyond his line of sight, but he wasn’t frightened.

He was numb.

It hollowed his chest out, the feeling; an insidious scoop that neatly carved his heart from his breast with sinister spectral surgery, leaving him with a pulse, but no soul. He breathed, but there was no air to be had; lungs that had once filled and trilled with music for a monster of a man expanded and contracted dutifully, but he exhaled hot vapours of nothing. Whatever he was – whatever he _had_ been – had suffered a fatal blow, rent by the slice of Geralt’s words. He’d meant them, Jaskier was sure; the precision with which he chose to murder the bard had been far too calculated. Such sentiments were not conjured from the ether in a moment; Geralt had been pondering them for a time.

Jaskier would know, after all. He was a poet.

_Was._

“ _If life could give me one blessing,”_ The wildness of Geralt’s eyes sparked like struck-flint, the intention of arson, _“It would be to take you off my hands!”_

Jaskier started, the grate of Geralt’s baritone pricking his ears afresh, as though just spoken. He’d dozed for a moment, he realised, exhausted from the divide of his psyche and body. The sun was chasing away night’s embrace, the two lovers endlessly circling the sky in flirtatious flits – never to truly meet, only gently kiss in the hours of dawn and dusk. Geralt was the sun, he thought; a far-away star, infused with the chaotic energy of heat and light. To behold him was to gradually go blind; to walk under his stare was to burn. He consumed those under his dominion and, distant as he was, didn’t even notice.

Or maybe he did, and he didn’t care.

Jaskier rose when the filtered morning light bathed the path in enough of a wash that he could see to walk, and then he navigated his clumsy footsteps back to where he’d taken a wrong turn, descending again. It wasn’t his fault, he registered; when they’d ascended, they’d taken that ‘short cut’. The one where they’d all nearly died. Geralt was in such a rush, so fucking self-absorbed that sacrificing his party had been a risk he’d gambled with. What if it hadn’t been Borch that had fallen, Jaskier wondered, but _him?_ Would Geralt have even reached out? Would he have clutched the iron chain in the same desperate manner, refusing to yield?

Would those twin suns have been the last thing Jaskier saw, emotionlessly blazing, as he fell into the clutch of the mist?

The thought wracked his body with a shudder. He tripped on a stray rock, stumbled, and caught himself on his hands and knees. Wet. It was a sneaky riverbed, babbling in a slow, gentle flow by the side of the path. Vaguely, he recalled washing his face here on the ascent. The thirst in his throat punched its way into the forefront of his mind, the dry parch of his mouth making him gasp, and he cupped his hands and drank greedily. The water poured down his dusty doublet, muddying it. Still he consumed, great gulps that filled his belly and soothed his gullet until the ache was slaked, and he, still crouching, absently regarded the blood on the heels of his scuffed palms.

Blood and water. The coppery tang of his own life coated his teeth. He rose, and began to walk again.

The afternoon sun was less oppressive as he made his way to the base of the camp. Other horses lingered, tethered where their owners had left them; dead people who would not return. The dwarves had already looted saddle bags, he saw, but there was no mercy for the animals. Gently, Jaskier approached each beast and untied the clasp of their bridles, working to unfetter buckles and unburden them from their tack. They were thirsty, and each instinctively trotted away once freed, sourcing the riverbed. He left one grey horse hitched, for now, though he did find a dusty old pail to fill with water, putting it before the grateful mare.

And then he spotted Roach.

The horse stared at him as though it had the intelligence Geralt impressed upon it, and Jaskier didn’t note he was shaking until his teeth began to clash together, a violent chatter that he could not suppress. Geralt had not descended the mountain yet; he was probably meditating, or smugly brooding, or stroking his cock in the solitude he’d so desperately been craving.

_**Well, I’ve been afraid of changing,  
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you** _

Something frayed and ragged in Jaskier finally gave, like the last thread of a ship’s rope worn down by salt and sea, whipping free from its bound knot to unravel a sail.

He screamed.

The restrained grey horse spooked at the sound, shuffling as far away from the bard as her reins would allow. Roach’s ears folded back, but she didn’t move; she wasn’t even hitched. Jaskier howled until the vibration of his throat turned to scratching rusted wire, until the gasp of his breath shattered in stuttering sobs, until he was hunched over and weeping in ugly, red-faced despair, strings of saliva drooling from his open mouth. The wound in his chest made itself known, the infected edges throbbing, and the bard clung to the trunk of a tree like it would anchor his mettle. He’d never known such pain. He’d never felt such a catastrophic clash of emotion in his being, two fronts of a storm meeting; the hail of it pelted him in a merciless assault, leaving him bruised, icy, and adrift in a tempest he’d never asked for.

It was a long time before he regained his senses, the low wounded whining that trembled from his chapped lips ceasing as he demanded command of his body, stilling. In and out. His lungs, still ravaged, drew in the dusky air gradually, until he relinquished the rough bark-scratch embedding splinters beneath his nails. Drunkenly, he took a step forward towards Roach. A second, more confident.

When he reached her, she stood impassively. Much like Geralt, he thought; the damnable creature didn’t care if he existed or not. He wished he had the spite in him to take it out on her, to sheath a blade into her carotid and bleed her out, leaving her cold corpse for Geralt to find.

But he did not.

Instead, he reached into the saddle-bags – untouched by the dwarves out of fear, or respect, he didn’t care which – and withdrew the potions and elixirs stored there. One by one, he smashed them against the ground, laughing like a man truly void of sanity, grinning as the toxic liquid seeped uselessly into the ground. The fumes made him giddy, but he didn’t care. He crushed them all, ground the glass into dust with the heel of his boot, and radiated in the feeling of it. Hundreds and hundreds of crowns, wasted; he knew that. He knew that because more than once, he’d paid for the reagents needed to create the poisons. Like a friend, he’d handed over coin with cheer, receiving the occasional grunt of gratitude in return.

_Like a friend,_ he thought? Like a fool. A fucking _fool._

It was dark by the time he’d finished his destruction, even unbuckling the well-worn bags from Roach’s side and tossing them into the river. The ground was blackened and glittering with shattered vials in the climbing light of the half-moon. Nothing would grow there for a long time.

“Tell him I said hello, would you?” He asked of Roach, his voice strung-out and thin. He didn’t care that he was talking to her like Geralt would. She blinked at him, and tossed her mane.

Sneering, the bard strode to the tethered silver mare, who took a few uncertain steps when he approached. He had to quash his rage long enough to calm her, to unhitch her reins and mount her, but he succeeded after finding a thick handful of wet grass for her to devour as a peace offering.

He eased her into a walk, aware that the rocky ground was difficult for her to navigate, and left the mountain behind. Let his ghost haunt the echoing rock, the sprawling yawning caves. Jaskier had died there, and still lived to remember it.

——————

It was a long time before Geralt came out of his meditation. Faintly, in the midst of it, he heard the screams of a dying animal – the keening howls of a wolf, or perhaps a fatally wounded bear. The noise danced in the dark space of his mind’s eye, teased his concentration and tempted him to return to the realms of reality.

Stubbornly, he refused. He sat, a lone sentinel, and let three days sneak past his guard.

When he opened his eyes to the sun of the fourth day, he was forced to take care of his physical needs. After he found bodily relief and drowned his thirst – there were bladders of warm ale left by others – he blinked at the path down the mountainside, and thought of those lost.

Yennefer, he knew, would be fine. She could open a portal easily enough; the mage could be anywhere in the continent by now. Jaskier, though.

A vision of the bard’s face taunted him, the glassiness of Jaskier’s vivid sky eyes; the way his features had betrayed the hurt that lanced through him bodily as Geralt had snapped. The shake of something that replaced the pain, something the Witcher was far too familiar with. A mask. A blankness. He’d put that there. He’d robbed Jaskier of the joy that crept at the corners of his mouth, of the positivity that the warm man exuded.

_**Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?** _

Squinting into the dawn, he thought of Jaskier as the sun. So beautifully bright, constantly reliable, never failing to provide light for Geralt’s path wherever he navigated. Even in the hush of night, the generosity of his persistent kindness made the moon glow. So far away from anything that the Witcher deserved. So unreachable.

He’d let the bard be his light. He’d basked in it, honestly. On days of cloudy travel he’d relaxed into a tune Jaskier was working on, memorising the notes. At night, he’d watched the man sleep in front of the flames of a campfire, the boyish lines of his face even softer in slumber. When they rented rooms, he’d let Jaskier spoil him with scented baths and fine food, never protesting when his coin was refused. Who gently peeled the bandages away from his healing body, and applied fresh poultices with care? Who made sure he was eating, and chewed his ear off when the Witcher wasn’t resting properly? Who walked beside the Witcher until his feet blistered, never once asking to ride Roach, cheerfully trotting faster on bleeding toes when Geralt had picked up pace?

“Jaskier.” He said the man’s name out loud, and the trickle of his mistake began in his mind like the beginning of an avalanche, the first shift of snow.

_Why,_ he wondered stubbornly, why did the bard haunt him? Hadn’t all the chaos that swirled around the Witcher’s life been set in motion by Jaskier? He growled, and began to walk down the mountain.

The wedding feast he’d forced him to attend. Had he not needed to guard Jaskier from his own hubris, he’d not have the weight of a child’s future on his blood-stained hands. But _he’d_ been the one to choose the law of surprise, a small voice reminded him. Nobody had forced him to do that. He’d uttered the words himself.

“Bullshit.” He spat out, addressing nobody. He walked faster.

That djinn. Jaskier had been so childish, trying to tug it from his grasp. Guilt still stabbed at his heart when he recalled the blood the bard had coughed, and the risk he’d shouldered. _What if he’d never sung again?_ And still, Jaskier did not hold the Witcher’s wish against him. Long after, he’d laughed about it; even though Geralt never offered an apology for the danger he’d put the bard in, Jaskier had never forced the conversation into the direction of demanding one. He’d simply… endured. He’d continued to shine. Who had made the last wish, after all? His words. _He’d_ wished for Yennefer.

So why wasn’t he thinking of her? If the djinn was so powerful, why wasn’t he distraught over the mage’s departure? Why could he only think about a pair of hands calloused by lute-strings, and an impractical doublet, and the tease of chestnut hair?

A trek that should have taken two days, burdened with the slow stumble of others, took the Witcher one. He should have thrilled at that. No longer was he weighed down, held back, drowning in snippets of song and story.

It was so quiet.

When he reached the base of the mountain where he’d left Roach, he halted in his steps. Saddles lay strewn about, bridles still attached to branches, void of steed. One still lingered by the river, a dappled stallion that eyed him with curiosity as he surveyed the destruction. He smelt the reek of his potions and elixirs smashed into the ground, their liquid spread in a circle of poison and fractured glass. The rich scent of iron tickled his senses; blood. Jaskier’s. Not much – not enough to advertise any dire wound – but it was there.

And oh, how the soil reeked of sorrow. No, not just that – _sorrow_ was too simple a word to describe what had manifested there.

Agony. Heartache. Despair. Unfettered fury. The smell of it was cloying, and Geralt struggled for breath. He heard the reliable drum of Roach’s hooves as she approached her master, bereft of saddlebags. He knew he was _supposed_ to be furious at the bard’s wanton destruction of his property. At the waste of coin, the time it would take him to replenish.

Instead, he felt stunned. Jaskier had taken the items that made him Witcher, the deadly liquids he choked down regularly, and had ground them down beneath his boot without mercy. With no thought of consequence. _Here I am,_ the action screamed, _here I stood, in the venom of your work. I was here. I cared. You broke me, the same way this glass explodes on the jagged ground._

_Goodbye,_ it said.

_**And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills,  
Well, the landslide will bring it down** _

“ **No.** ” Geralt refused, and the frozen fear began to tumble, a free-fall down the slope of his mind. It buried him in the drift, and snow-blind, he fumbled for Roach’s bridle. It was muscle-memory more than skill that saw him mounted.

Urging her away from the broken mess, the broken hearts, Geralt waded through the avalanche. He had to find Jaskier. He had to follow the sun.


	2. Part Two - Julian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier finds himself lost, wandering through towns he’d once haunted, shedding the skin of his old self. Geralt searches for him, aching.
> 
> (Jaskier is referred to as Julian in this part in places.)

**_Can I handle the seasons of my life?_ **

“Say it,” Jaskier growled, rolling his hips forward in a particularly deep thrust, “Fucking _say it_ and I’ll let you come.”

“Nnnghhh!” The burly man beneath him gasped, his lips parted, rutting helplessly back against the bard’s curved cock. Jaskier’s grip on the side of his throat tightened.

“What was that?” He panted, saccharine, “Speak _up,_ baby.”

“ _I belong to you!_ ” The broad-shouldered stranger sobbed, his eyes rolling back. Jaskier smirked like the nobility he was, relaxed his hand, and bottomed out inside his writhing lover. The man climaxed immediately, savagely, hard enough to milk the bard’s cock in muscular trembles that got him off, too. He pinched his teeth together and hissed as he spilled within the brute – Jaran? Larral? It didn’t matter – and laughed darkly as the strength of his huge thighs failed him, forcing him to fall forward into the streaks of his own come on the sheets.

Jaskier sat back and caught his breath for a moment, wiping himself on the bedspread. The man was still moaning, his reddened cock twitching. He let his conquest bask in the afterglow alone, rising from the bed to slip his breeches back on.

“You’re… going?” His lover sounded disappointed. Jaskier tried to recall his name again – maybe it was Darryn – but ultimately, he drew a blank.

“I’ve much to do tomorrow, darling.” He purred, shrugging into his doublet, leaving it loose. Pressing a kiss into the man’s forehead, he stroked the mop of inky, sweat-slick hair back. “You were _so_ wonderful. I’ll see you around, hm?”

“Julian…” The man begged, and Jaskier paused, throwing an icy glance over the curve of his shoulder.

“Actually,” He corrected loftily, “I prefer _Viscount Pankratz_ , thank you.” And with those words, he left another broken heart in his wake, closing the inn-room door behind him.

————–

To say Jaskier had developed a ‘type’ would be an understatement. Wherever he went, he sought out the tall, built men; men who considered themselves powerful, or strong, or unyielding. He delighted in seducing them, satyr-like in his teasing, and only after they’d devoted themselves entirely to him did he cast them aside, confused and doe-eyed.

It was sick. Jaskier knew it. But he didn’t fucking _care._

He forgot what caring for anything felt like, really. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it was that the last of his poet’s heart had withered like a forgotten rose at the corner of a king’s estate. Perhaps it had been when he’d traded his belt for a flask of disgustingly cheap rum – half of which he’d consumed, and the other half he’d poured over his treasured lute, laughing like a lunatic as he’d touched a lit branch to it, watching it burn. Perhaps it had been when he’d stumbled into Lettenhove, unshaven and reeking of ale, demanding of his estate and birthrights. Perhaps it had been when he’d wept over his mother’s gravestone on her birthday, drinking the finest claret from the cellars, apologising to her for what he’d become. What he could have been, what he _should_ have been.

Instead, he’d wasted his life following a man who’d thrown him away like refuse. Like they hadn’t spent more than two decades entwined in one way or another, chasing stories and dreams. Like he was _nothing._ Geralt thought him worthless. So he shed his former skin, bade Jaskier farewell, and stepped into the shoes of Julian, Viscount de Lettenhove.

 _Julian_ had a doctorate. _Julian_ had titles and lands and respectability. _Julian_ didn’t write songs about whores and drink and monsters and magic. The shadow Jaskier had cast – that was Julian. Now it was all that remained; the void of him. The darkness.

His beautifully crafted doublets in tones of jewel, carefully threaded with golds and silvers, embellished with rare stones – he tossed each one out of his closet, demanding his servants see the cloth given to the poorer people of Lettenhove for re-purpose or sale. His new wardrobe was muted; he favoured dark greys, black, sleekly stylish silks without much flair.

When a bird is placed under enough stress, it begins to pluck its own feathers out, an act of self-mutilation born from the desire to groom or comfort or regrow. Each colour Julian rejected, another feather. Each bard’s hat Julian tossed away, another plume pulled.

Nobody asked him to sing, anymore.

The first man that dared, in a rowdy tavern within a hamlet adjacent to Lettenhove, met with the unbridled fury of a wounded soul thoroughly soaked in cheap liquor. “You’re that _bard,_ you are!” He’d announced oafishly, “Play us the Witcher song!”

Julian had hit him in the jaw so hard he’d broken two of his own fingers. But still he punched, livid, unable to see anything but Geralt’s sun in his eyes, blinding, burning. It took two men to pull him from his victim, and it was only by the grace of his title – and a sum of apology coin later – that he escaped trial.

Word spread after that. The places he frequented fell silent when he entered, and he took up residence in corners, drinking alone. He tried not to think of how he’d first met Geralt, and how similar some of their habits had now become. He only blossomed into a beautiful flirt when he was targeting a potential lover, drunk enough to attempt to fill the echoing wound of himself with others. Like a carnivorous plant he drew them in, the sweet syrupy sap of his charm irresistible until it was too late, and his petals closed.

The hollow of him only grew. The infection only spread.

As the months marched on and he became more Julian than Jaskier, more shadow than substance, he chose his lovers with less care. Gender didn’t matter, and neither did rank. He craved touch at first, and then power, and then he’d grow disgusted with himself and turn it on the object of his affection.

He had a poet’s way of identifying flaws, of digging fingers into rent wounds and tearing, the sick slurp of soul-blood staining his hands. “It’ll _never_ work, sweetheart.” He’d once told a teary-eyed woman, at her door, “Your father needs you to wed for the family, and I? I’m a _Viscount._ I can’t dally with milk-maids. Best you can hope for is the blacksmith’s son.”

When she’d slapped him, he’d laughed. He’d bent over and laughed, and laughed. She called him insane, monstrous, and in the echo of the slamming door – and the faint noise of her sobbing – that’s what he truly was.

A year passed since the mountain, two years; he’d long-since stopped accidentally signing letters with ‘Jaskier’, and if he was too drunk to remember who he was, he referred to himself as ‘J’. Perhaps he should have settled at his estate in Lettenhove, but the wanderer in him remained, and he could never find the right town to stay in for longer than a few weeks at a time. They were always too big, or too small, or too loud; too _this,_ too _that_. Or worse, he’d run out of conquests, and have to face the reflection of what he’d become in every towns-person’s face; a mirror of disgust, pity, and loathing.

He spent a time in Oxenfurt again, hoping to find some normalcy in the studious environment. Perhaps he could chase past ghosts there. Any distraction was welcome.

It was the longest he remained in one place. At first, he was ‘Professor’ again. He had an office, and students to lord it up over, and the steady respect of his peers. Something within him stilled, like a magician’s dove in gloved hands, and he found he could breathe. He needed less and less wine or poppy-milk to sleep at night. He threw himself boldly into philosophy – for he refused to teach music – and lead his students in heated debates that became widely regarded at the university. His lectures were packed out.

But then the sun caught up to him.

At first, he could brush off the requests for tales of Geralt’s feats; he’d direct curious students to works he’d already written, and said he had no more to tell. But the more secretive he was about his past, the more of an enigma he became. They demanded everything from him, and, desperate to keep the first warmth he’d found in a long time at the university, he’d get dangerously intoxicated in his chambers and confess it all onto parchment, the writing made in ink that might as well have been his blood. He never read what he wrote once sober; he simply thrust the rambling, loopy papers at the librarian and let them file it away for curious eyes to devour.

One evening, he was standing in front of a mirror. He was strung out on a substance that a post-graduate student – currently on his knees, fellating him – had brought, and he stared at the haunted man in the glass with absent fascination. “What are you _doing?_ ” He whispered to his reflection. The man between his legs paused, and Julian managed to direct his gaze downwards. “Not _you,_ idiot. Fuck, do they not teach you anything, here?”

“Cock-sucking isn’t offered as a course.” His intoxicated impromptu lover defended, and Julian began to laugh bleakly.

“Should be.” He hummed, “Maybe I could teach it.”

The man wrapped his lips around the head of Julian’s cock again, but he pulled away. The student knelt for a moment, hot with embarrassment, before he rose. Julian clicked his tongue, and crooked a finger come-hither, sitting at his desk, unlacing the man’s breeches.

He had the younger man spilling down his throat in less than forty-five seconds, gripping Julian’s hair, gasping and cursing in an ancient language. _Fancy_ , Julian dreamily thought. It had been awhile since he’d brushed up on his elder speech.

After he’d shooed the besotted man from his quarters, he returned to the mirror to stare again, wanting to see something else. _Anything._ He wanted to see a glimmer of light on the surface of the aquamarine pools of his eyes. He wanted the promise of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He begged the reflection for something other than the bland, brutal man that warped and shivered with the drug’s manipulation before him.

When he didn’t get what he wanted, he smashed the glass.

And everything else in his room.

He awoke in the middle of the next day to a foot nudging his sternum, and he groaned. His head felt like a ship’s anchor, complete with barnacle embellishment. His mouth tasted like old leather. Blearily he looked up, regarding his assailant. The Dean himself stood above him, his old features creased with pity and irritation in equal measures.

“Please,” Julian whispered, the desert-sand of his mouth tumbling from his lips, “Don’t.”

“I have no _choice,_ Julian.” The Dean’s voice was firm, but not unkind. “Things have been… bad for over a month, now.” He held up a piece of parchment. Julian’s handwriting was unmistakable; in slanted letters he’d written over and over:

_I loved I loved I loved I loved I loved I loved_

“Confessions like these don’t belong in our libraries. Missed lectures, reports of substances lifted from the apothecary – Gods, Julian. The literature professor _saw you_ kissing an assistant teacher in the greenhouse, in the middle of the day! What you do behind closed doors, that’s not my business…” He glanced around at the chaos of Julian’s office, “But the school has a reputation.”

“Funny things, reputations.” Julian remarked bitterly, pushing himself to his feet, “How they are made, and broken, and remade.”

“You’re not a professor of philosophy any longer.” The Dean sighed, “There’s no need—”

“I’ll be gone before sunset.” Julian interrupted him, his voice hard. “I understand the embarrassment I’ve caused. I can only… promise it won’t happen again.”

“You should take some time to grieve, Julian.” The Dean’s voice softened. “I don’t know what happened, but I know the look about you. When I lost my wife… my world shattered. It took me years to put the pieces back together. A broken mirror is never the same again, once fractured – but it can still _reflect._ It still has purpose.”

Julian considered this, and then wondered, “Your wife. She loved you?”

“Yes.” The Dean answered, honestly. “And I her.”

Julian wanted to say something biting and harsh about how they were not the same, not even close. About how their pain was incomparable. But he didn’t have it in him. Instead, he muttered, “I am sorry you lost her.”

The Dean nodded, patted Julian’s shoulder, and left the man standing in the ruins of his life. Slowly, he located a suitcase, and began to pack the few things that mattered. He took up the parchment the Dean had brought, and stared at it.

Carefully, he crossed out the last word with the inked nib of his quill, and rewrote it above the mistake:

_I loved I loved I loved I loved I loved I ~~loved~~ lost_

————–

There were so many places Jaskier could have gone. Maddeningly, Geralt lost the scent of the mare the bard had been riding at a river, obviously forged through by the pair. From that point, he could truly have gone anywhere in the continent. In despair, the Witcher tried the first logical route, a direct path that lead to a well-stocked fishing village with a brothel infamous for loose values. The sort of place the bard might favour.

They’d never heard of him, apparently.

Geralt refused this answer at first, threatening to turn the place upside-down unless someone gave him information. He caught sight of himself in the window of the armoury; wild of eye, pearl-teeth bared in a glinting snarl. _Monstrous._ The terrified people were barring their doors from him.

Jaskier had not been here.

Recoiling into himself, he slunk back to Roach, and mounted her. The next village was half a day’s ride away. Maybe Jaskier hadn’t stopped.

It took two months for Geralt, stubborn as he was, to admit to himself that perhaps he’d taken the wrong track. The wrong fork. He travelled hard, riding Roach exhausted, but the part of the continent he was searching had no recent trace of Jaskier. No scent. They had his songs, but Geralt could not bear to hear them. Not from anyone else’s lips.

For a time, he stayed in one location. He wasn’t sure for how long. He took contracts, easily able to switch from one head-space to another; void of any feeling, he hunted the monsters mercilessly, and earned coin enough to keep Roach fed, and a roof over his own head. When the hunts were over, the rest of him returned, and he only ever slept in fitful snatches.

Jaskier’s face. He always awoke to the sound he’d heard whilst meditating atop the mountain; those wolves, the wounded _howl_ of wolves. Blue-eyed canines stalked his nightmares.

By the light of a lantern one evening, he examined a map, and tried to think of where Jaskier might go. There were too many options. He’d always said that he’d rather fall into a pit of tar than to take up the boring duties of Lettenhove, so Geralt considered that a last resort. There was Oxenfurt, where the bard had been schooled. Geralt recalled tales of broken hearts and beatings, but it was possible Jaskier would return there to teach. There were towns he had memories of spending nights with the bard in, roars of drink and song and laughter as he worked an adoring crowd into a frenzy. A smile curved his lips when he remembered a time someone had threatened to throw _‘the mutant’_ out, and Jaskier had defended him by cracking the side of the idiot’s head with his precious lute.

He loved that instrument, and he’d risked it for Geralt’s honour.

The Witcher’s heart squeezed painfully. How many of these little moments had he missed, or misread?

 _The coast_ , Geralt realised. Hadn’t he been babbling about the coast atop the mountain? Maybe he had settled there. Maybe he was composing new music, cosy in a happy new life, telling tales to new fans.

Geralt considered that if that was the case, he should just stay away. He should leave the bard to his happiness, to the wash of the ocean and the salt-tang of the breeze. Could he do that?

He _should_ do that, he knew. But he had to see Jaskier again. He had to _see_ that he’d found contentment without him. Once he was satisfied, then he’d let him go.

A little voice within him whispered that he’d never truly let the bard go, but he quashed it.

The next day, he paid the innkeeper, saddled Roach again, and headed for the coast of Cidaris. There were many places to check, and the western-most end of the kingdom seemed the most sensible bet. The journey would not be an easy one, or a short one, but he’d find Jaskier. He’d find the sun again.

He could bask from afar.

————–

What was there to do now?

Jaskier sat at the back of the wagon with his suitcase, feeling the jostle and bump of the road beneath him as the horse walked. He wasn’t certain where they were headed, but he honestly didn’t care. He had no profession – he didn’t count Viscount as one, considering he’d left cousins in charge of Lettenhove in his stead – and he had no direction. He’d run out of places to shade himself from the unrelenting glare of the sun. It would burn him, layer by layer, until he was ash.

When the cart stopped in Vizima after a disgustingly long and boring journey, he climbed from the back of it, took up his suitcase, and sought the inn. His priority should have been lodgings, but he wanted wine. Or mead. Or anything with an alcohol content, really. As he trudged towards the establishment, something in a shop window caught his eye.

It was a lute. There was nothing fine or decorative about it; the instrument was simply crafted from dark wood, boasting no inlaid gold or carvings. He stared at it for a long time, before he entered the shop.

When he rented a room, he took a flask of wine and the newly purchased possession upstairs to tune it.

————–

Geralt was faintly aware of the passage of time – different as it was for his kind – but he was still stunned when he caught sight of the date in a beach-town tavern. _Two years._ It had been too long since he’d parted with Jaskier on that damnable mountain, and still the man eluded him.

He was obsessed with his idea of the coast. It was too perfect. He spent a lot of time searching villages, shacks, towns, hovels; he combed the western continent thoroughly, sometimes following false leads with extreme enthusiasm, always meeting with the blow of empty disappointment. His search drew him further and further inland, and he supposed it wasn’t such a bad thing. He was nearing Oxenfurt, and that was a decent place to enquire after Jaskier.

The closer he got to the studious town, the more rumours he heard. Strange things; there were tales of a warped man that dressed like a bleak streak of storm-sky, raving about politics or chemistry. The subject often changed, and Geralt hoped someone would speak of a brightly-dressed professor that favoured music, but nobody seemed to mention that. Graduates that had settled near the town traded stories about other teachers, but none of them sounded remotely like Jaskier, and he tuned them out.

Vizima was the next large city he’d hit before making his way to Oxenfurt, and it was a good place to restock and rest Roach.

As he entered the outskirts, he could have sworn that he smelt the faintest trace of something familiar.


	3. Part Three - Geralt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you say to someone you've been searching for for two years, when you don't understand your own feelings? Geralt struggles with who Jaskier has become, and has to reconcile past, present, and future.

**_And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills,_ **

Jaskier frowned at the lute as he toyed with it. He would have thought that a new instrument would at least be somewhat tuned, but he spent a long time tightening the strings, or giving them the slightest slack. It occurred to him that perhaps he was just buying time, too scared to actually play anything. It had been years since he’d strummed a note, or even so much as hummed a tune.

At the start, there had been songs in his head. Lyrics about loss and yearning and the bleak waste of time that stretched in his wake like a startled stroke of ink on parchment. He never wrote them down. He drank or fucked them away, until they became patchy snippets of nothing. Until they stopped altogether.

Now, as he sat on the windowsill and stared at the distant horizon, he wondered what to play. He considered all of his compositions; they tingled at his fingertips, muscle-memory intact. But none of those bawdy, hopeful songs made him feel anything. They’d become part of the echo of his insides, ricocheting against the raw edges.

He held his fingers in place, and struck a chord. A click of his tongue, a minor adjustment. Then he tried again.

“I once knew a bird at the edge of the world that never learned to fly,  
And I asked it: what use for a thing with wings that cannot roam the sky?”

His voice was as rich and full of longing as it had always been, although he heard the thickness in the free-form song, the lack of practice. Annoyed, he set the lute down, and picked up the jug of wine. As he drank from it, he watched a hawk hover on the horizon, hunting, waiting for a flick of movement below.

\------------

Geralt walked Roach further into town, towards the only decent-looking inn. As he passed a shop, he stopped dead in his tracks, assaulted by a scent that was as familiar as it was foreign, a twisted juxtaposition of everything he remembered. He could not mistake Jaskier’s smell – the bare essence of it, the sweat and skin. But it was tainted somehow. Jaskier had smelled like summer sun, like raindrops on a hot cobbled road, like everything beautiful and alive. This scent, whilst he could not deny it belonged to Jaskier – it was so _wrong_. Bitter, the taste of stale ale, the stench of pain and iron and salt.

For a moment, he couldn’t move. Roach nosed him, concerned. He barely shifted, despite the strength of her head. He was rocked by two revelations: Jaskier was here, or he had been here very recently, and Jaskier was suffering.

He drew a deeper breath, despite his dislike for this new smell, trying to work out where to go next. There was little need for him to do so, because he heard a song somewhere above him, and he whipped his eyes upward. That was Jaskier’s voice. Jaskier’s singing. But the man in the window, strumming a lute as he stared out at the distance – it _couldn’t be_.

Geralt raked his gaze along the dull colours the bard was clothed in. He noted the way his hair was getting carelessly longer, curling slightly at the ends. A shadow of beard growth whispered across his chin. Jaskier never neglected his appearance, ever. The Jaskier he knew was a bold, brilliant burst of colour and expression. He was clean-shaven and bright of eye and— _fuck_.

This Jaskier looked haunted and exhausted. Geralt wanted him to keep singing, but the man frowned as if he didn’t possess the most lovely voice in the entire world, and picked up a jug of what Geralt could only presume was alcohol instead. Geralt was only moved from his gawking when someone purposefully jostled into him, muttering about gormless Witchers. In confusion, he stared after the pedestrian, and then kept walking towards the inn.

Geralt couldn’t have done this. Had he done this? He didn’t like to remember the mountain, but he dragged up the event in his mind’s eye anyway. Jaskier’s face. He saw it enough in his nightmares. The resignation, the flinch, the way he just... absorbed Geralt’s disgusting abuse, and left with it clinging to him like a parasite. Geralt knew the answer. He knew that the leech of him had sucked the colour and life from his bard, and now this husk remained.

Angrily, he handed Roach over to the most competent looking stable-hand, obsessive as ever with her care, paying well enough for her to be fed and brushed. Then he entered the inn, ignoring the keeper, taking the steps two at a time. He had no plan. Geralt had been looking for his bard for two fucking years, and now he’d found him broken and bleak, and he had no clue what to say. He stood at the closed door with hands fisted, tempted for a moment to run away from all of this like the coward he was. That thought alone was enough to spur him into action. He entered without knocking.

Jaskier looked up from the windowsill. Shock didn’t even register on his features. He simply regarded Geralt with a steady resignation, still drinking from the jug. The two men stared at one another; they were not five feet apart, but it might as well have been five miles.

“Let it be known,” Jaskier said, “That you came to me of your own accord, Witcher.” Geralt flinched at the informal word. “If any trouble befalls you, be it on your own head.”

“Jaskier.” Geralt rasped, his voice gravel-dry from lack of use, “I—”

“Julian.” Jaskier cut him off, before he went back to staring out the window, “Actually, Viscount Pankratz. I don’t use my bard name these days.”

Geralt knew of his nobility and his birth name, but Jaskier hated both. He recalled a time when they’d come close to Lettenhove, and Jaskier had all but demanded they camp in the woods, rather than risk staying in lodgings. That was the night they’d drunk far too much vodka and had shared snippets of their past. Jaskier had said that he’d rather eat sand than go back to the duties of his title. So for him to shed his bard name – _fuck_. It was the loudest declaration he could publically make; he no longer associated with Geralt.

“I’m not calling you that.” Geralt refused, “Your name is Jaskier.”

“ _Was_. When I was younger, and stupider, and content to waste my life in the wake of a man full of contempt for me.” Jaskier made it sound conversational, although Geralt could smell that awful, acrid emotion sharply increase. What was it? It was close to pain, close to anger, but not quite the same.

“I’ve searched for you for two years.” Geralt said, the admission making him feel foolish. Jaskier picked up on it immediately.

“Thought Witchers were supposed to be good at tracking.” The bard scoffed, affording the larger man a withering glance, “I suppose you think you know someone, right?”

“I was looking at the coast.” Geralt offered, lamely. “Because you said—”

“I know what I said.” Jaskier interrupted, and his pale eyes flashed like the sun striking a mirrored surface. “I am perfectly able to recall the things I said. What did _you_ say, again? Gods, something terribly eloquent – I believe it was ‘hmm’, or similar. And then you went off to fuck the witch that you’d bound to yourself, and I spent the night alone.”

Geralt visibly flinched. He had no defence for that. His eyes lowered, shame burning hot in his chest.

“Why would you look for me when you were oh-so besotted with her? Or did you try that first, taste rejection, and think that I’d make it all better for you again, like I always did?” Jaskier’s upper lip curled.

“I haven’t seen Yen since that day.” Geralt murmured. 

That, at least, garnered a reaction. “What?” Jaskier probed, “Why?”

“Because I was looking for you.”

Jaskier took another drink, letting silence lapse between them. And then he asked the next logical question. “What for?”

Geralt hesitated. He wasn’t good with words, or emotions, or any of the things Jaskier could navigate like a ship’s captain of cognitive intellect. That was how it always was; Geralt could be strong and brave and Jaskier could deal with human complexities. He knew that he needed to apologise, but he also knew that would not be enough.

But it was a start.

“To say I am sorry. For the way I treated you on the mountain. And before that.” Geralt raised his eyes, then; he knew that his words were worthless if he was too scared to face Jaskier’s ire. Gold on blue, his gaze was met.

“The way you treated me?” Jaskier’s eyes narrowed. Of course he’d want specifics. Geralt owed him more. He grit his teeth, and tried to string the words together.

“Like you weren’t... a friend.” Geralt recalled how important the word was to Jaskier. “You were. A-are. But I never told you.”

Jaskier’s expression was guarded. He said nothing, which Geralt took as a hopeful sign. At least he wasn’t outright telling him to fuck off.

“I should have told you more. Or at least once. All the shit that happened, Jaskier... fuck. None of it was your fault.”

“I know.” Jaskier whispered, raising his chin.

Geralt looked desperate. “Why did you leave, if you knew? Jaskier, I’m... sorry. I’m _sorry_ I said those things. I didn’t want you to leave.”

Jaskier fell quiet again. He swirled the wine in his jug. It smelled cheap and too sweet. “Because I loved you with honesty, every day, and you didn’t care. You’d pull out my feathers, one by one, and I’d thank you for it. I thought you just needed time, but I gave you twenty fucking _years_ of time, and on the mountain – you took my last feather. I fell from the sky and I realised, in my descent, how blind I had been to your disdain for me.”

Geralt was frozen. He couldn’t cry, but his eyes were glossy gold, and his hands were clenched into fists. Heartbreak. That was what Jaskier smelled like.

That was why he chased Jaskier and not Yen. Because he cared about the sorceress, on some deep level he didn’t understand, but Jaskier. He... _loved_ Jaskier. As he stood there, he knew he always would. Somewhere along the line of their travels, tolerance had turned into affection, and then into love.

But he’d never even admitted that he thought of Jaskier as a friend. Geralt, in his stubborn hubris, had done what he’d been taught to do. He quashed down any feelings like coal-embers beneath the heel of his boot. He lied to himself so often that he believed his own bullshit. Jaskier was a travel companion, nothing more.

“What... does love. What does it feel like?” Geralt’s voice was small and weak, but he couldn’t find it in himself to hate the question, because he wanted to know. To be certain.

Jaskier’s brow furrowed. “Whatever you feel for Yennefer. You know, the tightness in your chest. The way you feel sick if you think of any harm befalling her. The way you’d trade sleep for the chance to watch her, instead. Don’t be stupid, Geralt. You know.”

And Geralt did know.

He recalled all the times he’d stay up, watching over the bard slumbering, delighting in the play of the firelight on his skin. All the times he’d hunt for good meat to ensure Jaskier was well-fed, even though Geralt would have been perfectly content with dried rations. He remembered always taking the floor when there was a single bed, so Jaskier could rest. The few times Jaskier had gotten hurt on a hunt, and Geralt had seen to his wound with obsessive care, scenting him constantly for signs of infection. The pang of sadness when they would part every winter, and the relief upon seeing him again in spring.

Then he thought about Yennefer. She was beautiful, and Geralt liked that. But she was a wildfire; she was something to behold in wonder, untameable. Geralt never worried about her. He certainly did not find himself daydreaming about her. When they shared a bed, Geralt slept.

When Geralt shared a bed with Jaskier, he stayed up all night wishing he could feel the bard against him. Watching the flutter of dream behind his closed eyelids. Breathing the sunshine of him.

He must have looked a sight, because Jaskier actually seemed concerned, albeit fleetingly. “You look like you might vomit. If you’re going to do so, please find someone else’s room to do it in.”

“I know.” Geralt rasped. “You’re right, I _know_.”

“What?” Jaskier sounded irritated, and Geralt couldn’t really blame him.

“L-love. The things... you said. I’ve felt them.”

“Yes, I am aware.” Jaskier said, glaring. “I’ve heard you go on about Yen—”

“No. Not her. You. I felt them with _you._ ” Geralt’s eyes were wide and honest.

Jaskier’s mouth hung open, before he closed his teeth together with a click. “This is some cruel horse-shit to pull, Geralt, even for you.”

“What would I gain from lying to you?” Geralt implored, his eyebrows pinching together.

Jaskier turned his head, looking at the sky. Geralt could smell the salt of his tears. “I don’t know.” He spat, “Your old mule to beat? If you say the right things, then I’ll just trot along your side like a fucking idiot—”

“No.” Geralt’s voice was strained. “No, Jaskier. If you don’t want to walk the path with me ever again, I will respect your choice. But you must know. I-I didn’t know. I don’t understand the things within myself. I was taught to disregard them. Not to trust them. So, I... that’s what I did, with you. I disregarded you, because if I did it enough, maybe... maybe the feeling would stop.”

A whimper. And then, “Did it?”

Geralt shook his head. “It never stopped. I love you. I love you, and I am sorry.”

He watched a dance of emotions waltz across Jaskier’s wearied features. Distrust, of course. Anger. Confusion. He seemed to settle on fear. Jaskier pointed at the door.

“You said what you came to say.” The tears spilt over, streaking down his cheeks, “Now, go.”

Geralt’s feet were not obedient today. He would give Jaskier anything, he knew that now, but he didn’t want to leave his presence. Not just yet. Not after looking for so long.

“...No.” Geralt challenged, weakly.

“Get out.” Jaskier’s wine-stained teeth were bared.

“No.” Geralt said, squaring his shoulders. “Not until you tell me you hate me. That I am alone in this feeling. If that is how you feel, I will go.”

Jaskier’s chin quivered. He rose suddenly from the windowsill, upsetting the jug. It smashed on the ground, sending a dark blossom of wine splattering on the floorboards, but neither of them paid it mind.

“Go away!” Jaskier shouted, his voice breaking.

“Tell me.” Geralt dared, his irises like fool’s gold in a glitter, the slit of his pupil a thin whisper. “Tell me I am alone.”

Jaskier choked on a sob. He swung a fist, and Geralt let him. It connected with his chest in a thud that definitely hurt Jaskier more than him, but he hefted the other hand, too. He went to punch again, but his movement faltered, and he ended up gripping Geralt’s shoulder instead.

They exchanged a look for a long moment. The sunlight of Geralt’s eyes pierced through the clear lakes of Jaskier’s, shafts of memory light and the bottomless depths of emotion shared. And then they collapsed into one another, desperate limbs grasping, chests pressed, faces nuzzled into hair. It took them to the ground; even kneeling, they clung in the embrace, trading soft sobs and whimpers of neediness.

For a time, that is how they stayed. Simply holding, existing in the pendulum swing of time together. Jaskier wept, and Geralt shuddered. But they did not say another word. It bled through their skin, instead: _I love you, I love you, I love you._

When they finally found the strength to part – not far, simply to look at one another – Jaskier stroked away a few stray silver strands from Geralt’s forehead.

“Will you stay?” He whispered.

“Yes,” Geralt promised, “For as long as you’ll have me, I will stay.”

\------------

Tales of the White Wolf and his adventures began to spread across the continent again in the form of song. There was a different quality to these lyrics; they were more thoughtful, less likely to rely on childish puns and lewd imagery to get their point across. More than that, though – there was an underlying fondness that had been missing before. It made the songs more human somehow.

Geralt of Rivia no longer walked with Jaskier the bard. They travelled side-by-side; Geralt saddled atop Roach, and Jaskier riding a dappled gelding that he named Bream. When they stayed at an inn, they rented one room. When they shopped at market stalls, they strolled with their hands clasped comfortably together.

Jaskier had taken to wearing scarves of vibrant colour with his grey clothing, which he had embroidered with gold thread. Geralt could often be seen, in springtime, with dandelion flowers braided into his hair. When Jaskier lead, Geralt followed.

It was once said that Jaskier was Geralt’s bard. Now, they spoke of Geralt, Jaskier’s Witcher.

_**Well, the landslide will bring it down.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this little feelings songfic! Sorry it took me awhile to finish; I sort of forgot about it. lol. Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I can also be found on tumblr: @inber


End file.
